’Then don’t take it; I will look to it
myself. And mind you, call me at the time I said.’

CHAPTER IV

PEEPING TOM OF WALLINGFORD

To be an attorney-at-law, avid of practice and getting
none; to be called Peeping Tom of Wallingford, in
the place where you would fain trot about busy and
respected; to be the sole support of an old mother,
and to be come almost to the toe of the stocking—­these
circumstances might seem to indicate an existence
and prospects bare, not to say arid. Eventually
they presented themselves in that light to the person
most nearly concerned—­by name Mr. Peter
Fishwick; and moving him to grasp at the forlorn hope
presented by a vacant stewardship at one of the colleges,
brought him by coach to Oxford. There he spent
three days and his penultimate guineas in canvassing,
begging, bowing, and smirking; and on the fourth,
which happened to be the very day of Sir George’s
arrival in the city, was duly and handsomely defeated
without the honour of a vote.

Mr. Fishwick had expected no other result; and so
far all was well. But he had a mother, and that
mother entertained a fond belief that local jealousy
and nothing else kept down her son in the place of
his birth. She had built high hopes on this expedition;
she had thought that the Oxford gentlemen would be
prompt to recognise his merit; and for her sake the
sharp-featured lawyer went back to the Mitre a rueful
man. He had taken a lodging there with intent
to dazzle the town, and not because his means were
equal to it; and already the bill weighed upon him.
By nature as cheerful a gossip as ever wore a scratch
wig and lived to be inquisitive, he sat mum through
the evening, and barely listened while the landlord
talked big of his guest upstairs, his curricle and
fashion, the sums he lost at White’s, and the
plate in his dressing-case.

Nevertheless the lawyer would not have been Peter
Fishwick if he had not presently felt the stirrings
of curiosity, or, thus incited, failed to be on the
move between the stairs and the landing when Sir George
came in and passed up. The attorney’s ears
were as sharp as a ferret’s nose, and he was
notably long in lighting his humble dip at a candle
which by chance stood outside Sir George’s door.
Hence it happened that Soane—­who after
dismissing his servant had gone for a moment into the
adjacent chamber—­heard a slight noise in
the room he had left; and, returning quickly to learn
what it was, found no one, but observed the outer
door shake as if some one tried it. His suspicions
aroused, he was still staring at the door when it
moved again, opened a very little way, and before
his astonished eyes admitted a small man in a faded
black suit, who, as soon as he had squeezed himself
in, stood bowing with a kind of desperate audacity.